A Guide for Staying Organized in Daily Activities

Staying organized throughout your daily activities is important because it enhances productivity, lowers stress levels, and reduces the number of mistakes. To stay organized, you need to use an app or planner to write items down and keep up with important events and deadlines. It is important to schedule specific times throughout the day to answer emails and messages and keep your workplace clutter-free. As a way to avoid losing items, you should always keep important items in the same place so you know exactly where they are. Take to learn about the benefits of organization and tips for staying organized in your daily life.

A Guide for Staying Organized in Daily Activities

Want to Get More Done? Here is How to Stay Productive Every Day

By Elisi Studios

If you get distracted it can take you around 23 minutes to get back on track. We live in a world full of distractions. It may be more fun to interact with the distractions instead of doing what’s important. 

Below we’ll look at how to stay productive in a world where you want to do everything but work. 

Focus on One Task

When you multitask you may believe you’re getting more done. Yet, you’ll find if you do the tasks separately not only will you get them done faster, but you’ll do them better as well. 

When you do one task at a time it’ll help better focus your mind and keep you on track.

Perhaps you’re multitasking and don’t even realize it. This could be listening to music or having a movie or show on in the background. Try to turn off the noise as it’s just another distraction.

Try doing your most difficult task first. That way all tasks after will feel like a breeze. If you do the simple tasks first you may find you don’t have the energy to do the more difficult task later. 

Change Your Environment

Maybe you’re completing your tasks in a location where there is a lot of foot traffic or noise. Perhaps you’re too comfortable in your current space and can’t force yourself to work. If either of these is true, try finding a new location to get your work done. 

Put Devices Away

Another form of distraction is devices. When you need to get something done, make sure your phone or tablet isn’t near you. You’ll be more likely to avoid the temptation of looking at them. 

Turn off notifications as well. The sounds can draw you towards your phone and distract you from your tasks. 

Make a Schedule

One way to get yourself to be productive is to create a routine. Make a schedule of what you would like to get done each day. If there is something you need to do every day, make sure it never leaves your calendar. 

Once you have everything in your schedule, create deadlines for yourself. Make sure to write the deadlines down, otherwise, you’re less likely to follow them. 

Get up Earlier

To start the day right you need to get a good night’s sleep. Otherwise, you won’t have the energy to get through the day. 

Once you get up in the morning, try setting your alarm clock 15 minutes earlier. Then you may not feel as rushed to get things done in the morning. Your levels of stress will be reduced. 

You can fit in time to exercise, drink coffee, take a shower, anything that will help get your mind more motivated. 

Take Short Breaks

Remember to leave time for breaks in your schedule. Working all day isn’t realistic. You’ll be more stressed and fatigued. 

Do the opposite of what you had been doing. If you were sitting, get up and walk around, and vice versa. Try to keep from thinking about the task you were doing before to get the full benefit of the break.

Try taking five-minute breaks throughout the day. 

How to Stay Productive in a Fast-Paced World

Hopefully, you have a better idea of how to stay productive now. It may not seem like these methods work at first, but remember you need to do them continuously to make them a habit. There is no quick fix. 

Review our blog to learn other habits you can start to improve your life. 

Note Taking App: Writing Things down to Get Things Done

Are you one of those people who’s always looking for ways to boost your productivity? Do you have paper lists everywhere in an attempt to organize your work? Have you tried every organizational method out there and found that none of them help you stay focused?

If this sounds like your struggle then a note-taking app might be exactly what you need. Read on to find out how you can manage your time and tasks more efficiently and how the right note-taking app can help.

How Writing Things Down Helps Productivity 

The impulse to write things down as an organization method is strong, and there are very good reasons for that. 

Writing down everything you have to do and notes about those tasks gets all of that information out of your brain, which helps relieve the anxiety that comes with having lots to do. Writing makes you feel more in control of the work and the information.

Writing also allows you to see everything in one place. This allows your brain to process it differently, which can help you figure out how to tackle the work effectively.

And writing things down helps you remember. Several studies have shown that information retention increases when we write things down. 

So, when you’re looking to get things done and organize but you don’t know where to start, writing a to-do list is a great place to start. 

Writing an Effective To-Do List 

What makes a to-do list effective?

  • Specificity: Don’t write a vague task like “Call Vince.” Add some details that help you remember what the task is about.
  • KISS: Keep It Short and Simple! Keep your daily to-do list short – ten tasks maximum. Keep your daily to-do lists to tasks you can actually accomplish today.
  • Prioritize: What actually needs to be done first? What can wait? Be brutally honest so you can pare down your list to follow the KISS method.
  • Have multiple to-do lists, but tackle them one at a time: Have a daily to-do list, a weekly to-do list, and a project to-do list. Move tasks between them as the project develops and you finish tasks.

Having an effective to-do list makes the difference between having a plan to move forward and floundering from one thing to the next.

Organizing Your To-Dos and Your Time With the Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management tool that allows you to work through your to-dos in a way that boosts efficiency and productivity. 

The Pomodoro Technique suggests working on each task for a short period – a half-hour or an hour – and then taking a 5-10 minute break. When you come back from the break you resume the task or move onto a new one. Every three hours, you take an extended 15-20 minute break.

The idea behind this is when we work for too long on one task fatigue and frustration set in and our productivity and efficiency decrease. By working in sprints and taking breaks, we can hyper-focus on the task at hand, leave it behind, and come back or start something new with fresh eyes.

Break down the tasks on your daily to-do list into half-hour or hour-long tasks, so they can be done in line with the Pomodoro Technique.

How a Note-Taking App Helps

To-do lists and pen and paper have always gone together. But there are downsides to writing your to-do list in a notebook, on sticky notes, or in a planner.

The main downside is that you can lose or leave these things behind. Sticky notes get accidentally thrown away or fall off your desk. Notebooks and planners get left at home or the office.

The one thing you always have on you is your phone, which is why a note-taking app is the ultimate way to manage your to-do list. It’s always handy, so you can pull it up as soon as you think of something.

In an app like Elisi, you can organize your to-dos in a planner that allows you to see your daily to-do list and your weekly to-dos all in one place, organized by day. This app also has a separate section for notes. So, if you think of something related to your to-dos or you have new information, you can quickly pull up the app and take down notes for later.

Having an organizational tool always accessible means you’ll always be able to see what needs to be done and write down anything else that pops up.

More Tips for Boosting Productivity 

Staying organized can be difficult, especially when you’re overwhelmed by the amount of work you need to get done. Getting everything you need to do written down and organizing it into an effective to-do list helps you feel in control of your work and gives you a path to accomplishing it efficiently.

Using a note-taking app to assist you in organizing all your information and your to-do lists means that you’ll always have the information you need right at your fingertips.

For more tips on how to boost your productivity, check out our blog.

Best Habit Tracking Apps to Help You Get Your Life Together

Everyone has good and bad habits. It’s what makes up our daily activities from that first coffee in the morning to that last cigarette before bed. We all want to create better habits in our life, so we can be successful and healthy, but it’s not always easy to do. In fact, it can be incredibly hard.

The best habit tracking apps not only help you chart your existing habits but help you create new ones that benefit your life. We’ve tracked down some of the best apps out there.  We hope they’ll provide you success in developing good habits and eliminating the bad.

The Best Habit Tracking Apps Include Momentum

If you’re an iPhone fan, then you’ll want to pick up the Momentum app. It’s exclusive to iPhone, sorry Android users. It’s a wonderful app for tracking routines and habits, but also features the ability to extract data to Excel.

Anyone that loves data management knows how important Excel can be. What’s great is anything compatible with Excel you can use for your habit management.

Habitica Makes Habit Tracking Fun

One of the hardest parts of habit tracking is actually using the app. It can sit there unused for weeks, but Habitica makes it easy. Anyone that has played role-playing games knows they are heavily goal and quest-based.

It helps track your habits but also keeps you interested through quests and other gamification aspects. You can level up your character and so much more. If you like games, then Habitica is the habit tracker for you.

Social Networking for Habit Trackers

One of the hardest aspects of tracking and learning new habits is that it can be lonely. Habitshare lets you create a circle of friends that you can talk with and discuss your problems and triumphs. There’s even a messaging option to contact people directly.

It’s great for anyone struggling with motivation or needs someone to talk to when things get tough. It’s like Facebook for habit trackers.

You Can Get on a Winning Streak

Streak is another iOS tracking app that provides a variety of tracking and classification options and isn’t too difficult to learn. The interface is simple and you can track several habits at one time. There are even special icons for each one.

Siri can interact with the app by assigning specific phrases for habits such as drinking water or exercising. There are many benefits of good habits and this app can help you achieve them. 

Be Productive with Productive

What makes Productive great is that it helps promote healthy habits and motivates you to get more out of your life. By doing the good habits over and over again, it becomes a part of your lifestyle.

The app motivates you to keep doing these good habits. A lifelog shows a green dot for every day you worked on your tracked habits.

Good Habits Start with the First Day

Good habits are hard to start and bad habits are hard to stop. We all want to get healthier and be more productive, but we can’t always do it on our own. The best habit tracking apps work with you and motivate you to be a better person.

If you want to learn more about habit tracking and achieving your goals, then explore our/ site.

Highly Effective (and Free!) Time Management Apps

There’s so much to do and so little time. This age-old complaint seems to be one of the great maxims of the modern age.

This leaves us with the issue of how to cope with it. How do you manage time when it doesn’t seem possible to have enough?

You’re not alone, and things aren’t as bad as they seem. There are plenty of others with the same problems, and some of them have created apps for time management.

These apps will help you complete your tasks, whatever they may be, in the most efficient way possible. We’ll talk about some of our favorites in the paragraphs below.

Still, this is a great app that you should consider downloading.

1. Rescue Time

This app is more about understanding where your time goes and getting it back. Download the app onto your computer, and it will keep you updated on how much time you’re spending online.

With internet addiction being such a prevalent issue, this app could be a very effective time management tool.

2. Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk is another app that helps you organize your tasks and get them done. What sets this app apart from all the others is the fact that it can be linked to multiple devices.

The overwhelming majority of us–around 90%–use multiple devices in a given day, so this app can be a great way to keep up with everything.

The reason for this multiple device format is so the app can get your attention wherever you are. This can be a difficult task, especially since we have so much to do in a day.

3. Elisi

The first contender on our list is Elisi, an app that approaches time management in a structured, somewhat analytical, way. It relies on a system it calls GTD–Getting Things Done.

The GTD system is simple. Write down everything you need to do. After that, break it down into its simplest parts.

For instance, if you were going to cook a meal, you might first start with looking up a recipe, then go shopping for the ingredients, and then go about preparing the meal.

If there is a flaw to Elisi and its methods, it would be that the human brain isn’t that organized. Sure, having a schedule can help, but it’s not uncommon for us to be in the middle of something, only to suddenly have inspiration strike.

The Best Free Time Management Apps

There are plenty of great apps out there for time management. Not only that, but many of them are totally free.

We’ve mentioned only a few of our favorites in the paragraphs above, but there are plenty more out there. This means that there are a host of ways to approach the problem, so you can find one that fits your unique style.

We encourage you to do more research on your own if you’re interested.

If you want to know more about time management in general or the Elisi app in particular, please visit our site. We can give you some great tips on how to improve your self-management.

Hourglass on laptop computer concept for time management and countdown to deadline

How You Can Use The Daily Habits of Successful People To Improve Your Life

By Elisi Studios

There’s a book by Tom Corely, called “Change Your Habits, Change Your Life.” In it, he talks about the research he’s done into successful people (and their habits) over the last five years.

He found nine consistent habits that crossed racial borders, family backgrounds, and geographical areas.

To hear all nine, you’ll have to read the book, but we’re giving you a peek at our three favorite daily habits of successful people, below.

The Daily Habits of Successful People

According to Tom (and us!), successful people …

1. Get Up Early

Not all old-timey sayings are true, but “The early bird gets the worm” just might be.

Researchers have found that when you get up early, you get the best head start on the day.

Some people even posit that the first hour of your day defines how the rest of your day will go. So if you want to be successful, try getting up 15 minutes earlier than usual tomorrow, and 15 minutes earlier the next.

Eventually, when you reach a full hour earlier each day, use that time to set yourself up for success.

2. Never Stop Learning

If you think you were done learning after you graduated from school, you were wrong. Successful people are always chasing some kind of knowledge or another, whether or not it’s relevant to their work life.

This isn’t a new concept. In fact, you can find quotes about this from as far back as the ancient Greeks, Albert Einstein, and even The Office character Michael Scott.

So count this as permission to learn a new skill or pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read.

Even if all you have time for is an audiobook you listen to on your commute, get some new ideas in your head. You’ll be shocked just how much this small habit impacts your daily performance.

3. Prioritize Sleep

You’ve always known that you should be getting eight hours of sleep – even if you know you’ll only really get seven.

Sleep is more important than you’ve ever given it credit for, no matter how many articles you read.

For more about how dangerous being sleep-deprived really is, you can check out Ariana Huffington’s book.

In it, she talks about how to get better sleep, the emotional, physical, and work-based reasons we should, along with what can happen if we don’t. It’s eye-opening (about needing to close your eyes).

Make Your Time Work for You

No matter who they asked, who did the research, or what field these successful people were in, they all understood one thing. Time is the most precious resource we have.

Finding more of it, or making your use of it more effective (like by being more rested) is one of the most common daily habits of successful people.

Do you feel successful? We want you to. That’s why we created the Elisi app! Give it a try and see how you can up your productivity today.

How to Effectively Harness the Power of Bullet Points

By Elisi Studios

Writing in a journal can help heal physical wounds faster. If you’re an avid journal writer, you’ll likely know the benefits that this practice brings, such as mental clarity and a boost to memory.

But, have you ever considered writing a bullet journal? Such a practice could help you stay organized and help you to get more work done.

Drawing attention to important information and helping your habits stay on track by creating mini headlines, explore how to use bullet points effectively.

1. Keep Them Short

Your bullet points should be short. If you can say something in three words, why say it in ten? This will help draw your attention to the point, remind you of exactly what you need to do, and help you effectively do it.

You can then explain your bullet point further below the header if you need some extra clarity.

2. Keep Them Concise 

There is no point in having a short bullet point if it isn’t concise and to the point. You should keep all of your bullet points easy to understand. 

Remove any words which detract from the main point. As you skim your bullet journal, it’s important that your points are concise to keep you focused!

Furthermore, your bullet points should be used for only the most important points. Don’t add irrelevant points as these will detract your attention.

3. Limit Bullet Points

If you’re bullet journaling to help you stay on track, you will find that it’s important to keep your points focused. 

Therefore, limit those which can’t be achieved that day. Your bullet journal should help you move throughout your day and remind you of what you need to do. It should not hinder you and have you pondering exactly what you meant earlier. 

4. Reduce Punctuation

You’ll find that when you have poor grammar, it’ll be harder to focus on the bullet point at hand. 

This is not quite as important as having short bullet points. But, you may find that although you felt called to add 10 exclamation points, they’re actually distracting!

You wouldn’t write a work email with terrible punctuation as it will make you look bad, so don’t do this in your bullet journal.  

5. Do What Feels Right

After building the habit of bullet journaling, you’ll find what works best for you. Over the first few weeks, you’ll quickly figure out whether doodling helps you focus or whether having more white space keeps you focused. 

Then, when you’ve found the magic formula for bullet journaling, stick to it! This habit has huge benefits such as boosting your creativity, keeping you on schedule, and improving your mental health.

Bullet Points Are Popular for a Reason

You may be wondering whether using bullet points is the right option for you. But, it’s certainly worth a try. 

Nowadays, a lot of the content we read online is written in bullet point format. This is because it works at keeping our attention. So, it should work in your own journal too! 

If you’ve found this article useful, it may be time for you to invest in your own bullet journal. Try our online bullet journal today.

How to Choose Lifestyle Habits That Improve Your Life

By Elisi Studios

Have you been thinking about changing your life for better? Maybe you’re unhappy or one of the 900 million people that feel unfulfilled. Maybe you’re ready to feel more successful. 

Whatever the case, it never hurts to work on ourselves and there are simple lifestyle habits that you can adopt to do so.

Keep reading to learn how to choose the best lifestyle habits to reach your personal goals and improve your life.

First, Figure Out the Important Things

The first step in choosing lifestyle habits that will improve your life is to figure out what you want to improve in the first place.

Consider the things that are most important to you in life. Maybe it’s your family. Maybe it’s improving your career. Maybe it’s bettering your health or mindset.

Whatever they are, write down the top three things that you want to work on. This will help you plan your new lifestyle habits to fit your individual goals.

Now, What Are Your Passions?

A key to self-improvement is reuniting with or finding things you love. Too often people lose themselves and their lives become less fulfilling because they forget to spend time dedicated to their passions (outside of work).

Write down some of your favorite things and hobbies. Then, you can plan how to include them into your daily or weekly routine.

Set Goals

Now that you know what is important to you and what things you love, you can set goals to include them in your new lifestyle habits to improve your life. 

Goals are extremely important on the journey to self-improvement. They give us motivation and keep us focused. Be sure to set small goals, so you can have many successes along your journey to your large goal–a better life.

In your goals, you should include the things from the first two steps. For example, let’s say your family is one of the things you listed as important to you and you’re passionate about traveling. You can set a large goal to take a family trip, as well as small goals such as spending an hour each day with your family and putting a certain amount of money toward a travel fund each paycheck.

Plan, Plan, Plan

One of the most important lifestyle habits of successful and happy people is planning. Successful people plan each day, each week, and month.

Being organized will not only make you feel less stressed and more in control, but it will also make you feel super accomplished with you accomplish everything you had planned for the day and week.

We don’t recommend planning more than a month or two at a time though, because that can become overwhelming and cause more stress.

Get Up Early

Another important lifestyle habit to adopt is waking up early. The morning is a great time to think about your day, plan, and look back on your progress. It also always you to get a head start on the day which means you’ll have more time for yourself and your goals. 

Plus, everyone needs alone time to reflect. The morning is a great time to dedicate to this because you’ll find it very peaceful and (usually) quiet.

Let’s Start Your New Lifestyle Habits

Now that you know how to choose lifestyle habits that improve your life, you’re ready to get started. The best way to start is to get a digital bullet journal. A bullet journal allows you to plan, keep to-do lists, and track your daily habits. And, it’s all online so you have it wherever you go on any device.

Learn more about our digital bullet journal and try out here.

Jot These Down: 7 Amazing Mental Health Benefits to Journaling

By Elisi Studios

Most successful people keep a journal. But you don’t have to be the next Bill Gates or Walt Disney to enjoy journaling. According to the University of Rochester, journaling can ease stress, anxiety, and depression.

Here are 7 of the top health mental health benefits you can enjoy when you start a daily journaling habit.

Ease Anxiety

What’s a good way to get rid of the swirling thoughts running rampant through your head? Putting them on paper. Many people can get relief from their anxiety by releasing their thoughts. Take time to look at your anxiety. How many of your worries do you need to worry about now? Can you make changes to your behavior that would help them go away? You can find more tips to fight anxiety here.

Fight Depression

Like anxiety, journaling can help fight depression. Every day take time to list the things you’re grateful for or something that made you happy. Talk about one good thing that happened to you every day. Want more tips to boost your mood? Check out parts one and two here.

Clarify Your Thoughts and Feelings

This may seem like a weird mental health benefit, but it is. When you’re struggling with a big decision, journaling can help you weigh your pros and cons. Once everything is on paper, you can come to the best solution. Sometimes having an answer can provide peace and relief.

Release Your Stresses

What’s stressing you out? Are you mad at someone? Has someone hurt you? Write about it in your journal, and let it go. Use your journaling practice to forgive people who have done you wrong.

Organize Your Priorities

Overwhelmed with everything you have to do? Write it down and prioritize your list! Once things are on paper, your brain doesn’t have to hold on to that information anymore, so it can relax and let go. On top of that, you feel more in control because you know what you have to focus on first.

Improve Immune Function

One of the most surprising health benefits is an improved immune system. That’s right! Regular journaling can actually help keep you from getting sick. It can provide relief for those with autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis. Improved immune systems could come from relieving stress and anxiety, but it’s hard to say. Nonetheless, it’s a benefit we can all enjoy.

Improve Your Memory

Daily journaling can improve your memory. It forces you to practice active recall about things that happened during your day. But reviewing your journal can also help you recall – in your own words – things that happened a long time ago.

Journaling Provides A Wealth of Health Benefits

Whether you tried keeping a journal before, you can always start journaling today. You may enjoy keeping a fancy leather-bound journal and a nice pen. Many people struggle to carry their journal daily and thus drop their habit.

But you can start a journaling habit today, right on your phone. Download the Elisi App and start journaling today!

Calendar Integration

Since Elisi’s launch, calendar integration has been the most in-demand feature.  The app’s initial conception featured the compilation of a weekly to-do list, with no planned design for calendar events. However, after utilizing Elisi as a daily tool in the long term, we all realized the convenience that calendar events could offer. For this reason, we began work on calendar integration with Elisi. 

Surely, we have confronted some obstacles along the way. We needed to figure out how to parse iCal files, how to sync calendars across devices, and how to display the events in daily boxes, without overloading the interface or losing information. The hardest part, however, has been to avoid overfilling the interface with calendar events in the cases when an already full calendar is integrated. For now, we have made it easy to hide calendars, but we are open to other solutions that are more intuitive. 

To add calendars, please make sure you update Elisi to the latest version, click on “calendars” from the planner, and then simply follow the instructions.  We hope that you like this feature, and please don’t hesitate to give us your feedback.